With a storm threatening to disrupt operations, oil-spill response crews have been busy around the clock pumping fuel out of a tug that ran aground on B.C.’s central coast last week.

But Kelly Russ, chair of Coastal First Nations, said the spill response was too slow when the tug Nathan E. Stewart hit a reef while pushing a massive fuel barge north of Bella Bella. The barge was empty but the tug contained more than 60,000 gallons of fuel, an unknown amount of which has spread in a huge slick throughout the region in the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest.